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K 265 

THE STRUCTURE 

of 

SOVIET RUSSIA 

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL 



By WILFRED R. HUMPHRIES 

TEN CENTS 



THE STRUCTURE 

of 

SOVIET RUSSIA 

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL 



By WILFRED R HUMPHRIES 



\ 



CHICAGO 
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
1920 



Publishers' Note 

Mr. Humphries, a Social Settlement worldSr 
in the Hawaiian Islands, was for eleven months 
a war work secretary of the Y. M. C. A. in 
Soviet Russia. Reaching Russia at a time when 
there was no Russian army to work for, Mr. 
Humphries was employed in doing American 
publicity work, assisting in the smuggling into 
Germany and Austria of one million copies of 
President Wilson's fourteen points speech. 
Later, for the American Red Cross he was in 
charge of Serbian refugee colonization work in 
Russia. He traveled 20,000 miles in northern 
and central Russia and in Siberia, and had 
business relations with over one hundred local 
Soviets. 

He met personally Lenin, Lunacharski, Al- 
exandra Kollontay, Tchichernin, Petroff and 
other prominent leaders. He was present at 
the Constituent Assembly and at the third and 
fourth of the All-Russian Congresses of Work- 
men's and Peasants' Deputies. Mr. Humphries 
met leaders of the opposition parties, and at- 
tended meetings of the Mensheviks, left and 
right wing Social Revolutionaries, Constitu- 
tional Democrats and Anarchists in his en- 
deavor to understand the struggle. 

The diagrams on page 1 6 and the back 
cover page are reprinted, by permission, from 
the Christian Science Monitor. 

Copyright 1920, by Charles H. Kerr & Company 
>80 



MAK ; ' 7 |( J20§)CI,A566090' 



The Structure of 
Soviet Russia 

Political and Economic. 

Thoughtful people in America are wonder- 
ing at the strength and stability of the "ever- 
tottering" Soviet Government of Russia, and 
are realizing that the Russian bolshevists can- 
not be dismissed with a wave of the hand, 

There is a real government today in Russia. 
Over the largest contiguous territory inhabited 
by the white race the soviet flag flies. Go 
where you will in that territory, thousands of 
miles from Moscow or Petrograd, and you 
will find village and city Soviets nearly iden- 
tical with those you left behind you under 
the shadow of the Red Capital. 

Whilst decentralization has gone very far 
there is a degree of centralized control that 
•hardly seemed possible of attainment a couple 
of years ago. 

Then there was real anarchy — on the rail- 
roads, in the factories, on the front and in 
the villages. All had taken their affairs into 
their own hands, and were acting without any 
regard at all to the interests of the people as a 
whole. 

In the Fall of nineteen-seventeen, during the 
last weeks of the Kerensky regime and the 
first period of Soviet rule, factory workers 
were anarchistically seizing control of their 
factories without co-ordinated plans, often 
succeeding only in ruining expensive machinery 
and making the belated discovery that their 
managers and technicians were not so dis- 



4 THE STRUCTURE 

pensable after all. Those that didn't seize 
their factories presented extravagant wage 
demands to their employers. The employers 
paid the wages but increased their prices, thus 
forcing the burden upon the workers again, 
who again made fresh wage demands; and the 
vicious circle was only broken later when the 
workers, organized nationally, took over all 
power. Then the wage-scales were adjusted 
and often reduced. The Begatyr Rubber 
Works was a case in point, where the 
workers by successive strikes or threats to 
strike had forced from the private employers 
a minimum wage of 2200 rubles a month, 
which was more than the average worker's 
product could be sold for. Later, when the 
factory was nationalized, the Rubber Central 
of the Supreme Economic Council had to face 
the disagreeable task of reducing the wage to 
a minimum of 1200 rubles. 

Nor were the factory workers the only law- 
less ones. The capitalists evaded the tax- 
ation laws of the Provisional Government, 
were shameless in their food profiteering, and 
their representatives in Kerensky's government 
blocked all attempts at control. Food prices 
kept leagues ahead of wages. And Kerensky's 
coalition government was powerless and prac- 
tically without a program. 

And things were not any better out in the 
country. A wave of agrarian pogroms swept 
over the governments of Tambov, Penza and 
Voronezh in September 1917. The landlords 
would not give way one tittle of their 
privileges in favor of the rural communes; the 
peasants on the contrary were determined to 
secure the recognition of their contention that 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 5 

the land belongs to the community that works 
it. "God gave the land," they say, "to all 
the Russian people, and intended that every 
child born in Russia should have his birth- 
right in the soil." 

The landlords organized white guards and 
arrested peasant land committees that had 
been appointed by Victor Chernoff. Minister 
of Agriculture in the Kerensky Cabinet. 

The peasants replied by sacking many 
landlords' mansions with the aid of their 
soldier sons who had returned from the front, 
and the skies were often reddened that sum- 
mer by burning manors and hay ricks. They 
seized all that was movable, divided among 
themselves the big landlords' cattle, sheep, 
pigs, horses, farm machines, etc., and de- 
stroyed as going concerns many efficiently- 
managed large estates. 

Two irreconcilables- were thus clashing, the 
clamorous masses versus the embattled owners 
of Russia, and as a result complete anarchy 
was reigning in the central provinces of 
Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. 

Far from the Soviets having plunged Russia 
into anarchy, it was their resolute seizure of 
power that saved Russia from completely go- 
ing over the brink. This dynamic determined 
group of city workers and younger peasants 
was compactly organized and had a clean- 
cut program. 

Kerensky had tried coalition government, 
the democratic union of all classes, but it had 
failed. The landlords and captains of in- 
dustry had frustrated his efforts to realize in 
practice the great social changes that the 
masses were demanding. 



6 THE STRUCTURE 

When the Soviets, led by the Bolshevists, 
assumed power, they declared for working- 
class dictatorship during the transition period. 
They didn't believe that the propertied classes 
could be expected to assist in the work of de- 
stroying capitalism. 

Had the big landlords and the owners of 
industrial capital been less stubborn and stiff- 
necked when they had their chance under 
Kerensky, they might have held much of their 
power for many years, and they could have 
had a measure of compensation for what was 
taken from them,' but they seemed to have 
little comprehension of the social forces that 
were at work. They believed that industrial 
and agrarian unrest could be met with machine 
guns and cajolery. And so, for good or for ill, 
there came the bolshevik revolution by which 
the proletariat seized all power. Had I re- 
turned from Russia at that time I should have 
reported that the situation was hopeless, that 
hunger and misery and anarchy would reign 
over Russia for many years. But I did not then 
return. I stayed for eleven months thereafter, 
and saw arise the political and economic struc- 
tures that I now describe. 

THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, 

Taking the place of our aldermanic cham- 
bers or city councils, each town and city in 
Soviet Russia is governed by a soviet. The 
word soviet means council. This soviet is a 
delegate body, the delegates coming from all 
the trade and professional unions in the city, 
from every group doing socially useful work 
whether by hand or brain. Delegates are sent 
not only from the machinists', the plumbers' 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 7 

and the carpenters' unions, but also by the 
medical union, the teachers', the clerical work- 
ers, and even by the mothers' association. 
(Home-making and child-rearing are consid- 
ered to be in the highest class of socially-useful 
work, and the mothers* association in each 
city takes a general interest in everything that 
affects child life, and sends delegates to the 
city soviet just the same as does any trade or 
professional union. In Petrograd and in Sa- 
mara I talked with some of the representatives 
from the mothers' associations in those cities, 
and found them to be intelligent and serious- 
minded women whose influence in the Soviets 
was very great. Women withbut young chil- 
dren gain representation only on the same 
terms as men, that is, as they go to work and 
join the appropriate trade or professional 
union.) 

The number of delegates from each union 
to the city soviet is proportionate to its mem- 
bership. The idea of continuous representa- 
tion is recognized. Unions have the right to 
recall or instruct their delegates at any time. 
It is difficult for a delegate long to act contrary 
to the wishes of those who elected him. 

ORGANIZATION OF A CITY SOVIET. 

Obviously a council or soviet on which is at 
least one delegate from every occupational 
group is likely to be a large body. I saw small 
town Soviets of no more than fifty members. 
Petrograd and Moscow Soviets had from a 
thousand to twelve hundred delegates. The 
whole body meets monthly or oftener, though 
to meet the emergencies of war-making during 
the past year there has been a tendency to dele- 



8 THE STRUCTURE 

gate their powers and to have fewer elections. 

The soviet as a whole appoints sub-commit- 
tees, usually of three, on housing, public safety, 
food control, public health, the people's edu- 
cation, social welfare, the people's courts, etc. 
During the past year there were also "extraord- 
inary commissions to combat counter-revolu- 
tion". The chairmen of all these commissions 
or collegiums together form the central execu- 
tive committee of the city soviet. In making 
appointments to these collegiums the city soviet 
is not obliged to appoint from within its own 
ranks. 

In the large cities there are district or ward 
Soviets, built up from the house-block com- 
mittees and shop committees of the ward. They 
have executive but no legislative powers. They 
carry out the orders of the city central soviet 
and play a large part in the housing and food- 
control systems. 

VILLAGE SOVIETS. 

The innumerable village Soviets, made up of 
farmers, of course, send delegates to regional 
or provincial Soviets, and thence to the all- 
" Russian congresses of workmen's and peasants' 
deputies. 

The peasants of Russia so far have had less 
representation in the all-Russian congresses 
than have the city workers, the latter having 
representatives at the rate of one per 25,000, 
whereas the peasants had only one for every 
125,000. This roughly equalizes the number 
of city and country delegates in the congresses, 
since the peasants outnumber the city popula- 
tion probably five to one. The city workers 
explain this discrimination on two grounds; 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 9 

( 1 ) that the revolution was made chiefly by 
the city workers, and (2) that the city workers 
have given the right of self-determination to 
the peasants in the matter that most concerns 
the peasant, the land question, having enacted 
into law the peasant party's land program in- 
stead of their own. They, being Marxian so- 
cialists, would not have broken up the large es- 
tates, but would have kept them intact, en- 
couraging large-scale agriculture and scientific 
methods. In turn they claim for themselves 
the right of self-determination in the matter of 
the socialization of industries, which more vi- 
tally affects the city workers. 

ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESSES OF SOVIETS. 

Periodically there are held great congresses 
of delegates from all the city and provincial 
Soviets. According to the constitution, they 
must be convened twice a year. Actually there 
have been seven such congresses during these 
first two and a quarter eventful years of the 
Soviet regime, so many have been the crises 
to be met. At the sessions of the third and 
fourth all-Russian congresses that I attended, 
there were from 1,000 to \ ,200 delegates from 
city and provincial Soviets all over the country. 
The congresses are usually in session for from 
six to fifteen days. 

On the last day before adjourning they ap- 
point a central executive committee of 200 to 
be the repository of all power for the ensuing 
six months receiving its mandate from the con- 
gress that elected it, reporting its acts to the 
next congress, and then resigning. Its members 
are eligible for re-election to the next centra 1 
executive committee. 



1 THE STRUCTURE 

Under this system changes of government 
personnel can be easily made, yet there is op- 
portunity for continuity. Good representatives 
may remain in office indefinitely, though always 
removable. 

The Proportional Representation System is 
used by the All-Russian congresses in appoint- 
ing the central executive committee. Each po- 
litical party within the congress — Communist, 
Menshevist, Social-Revolutionary, and so on — 
is entitled to appoint its exact proportion. 

The All-Russian Central Executive Com- 
mittee meets almost every day in the national 
capital of Moscow during its six months' term 
of office. 

It has legislative as well as executive pow- 
ers, except on the broad questions of policy 
which are passed upon by the congresses. 

It appoints and controls the 1 8 commissari- 
ats or committees, the chairmen of which form 
the Council of People's Commissars, or Cabi- 
net. 

The Council of People's Commissars ap- 
points its own president, which so far has been 
Nikolai Lenin. There is no president of the 
republic. Lenin is only president of the Cabi- 
net and may be recalled by the Cabinet any 
day, just as the Cabinet or any member of it 
may be recalled at any time by the All-Russian 
Central Executive Committee. 

Some of the eighteen commissariats are: 
Foreign Affairs (G. Tchitchernin) ; War (Leon 
Trotzky) ; The People's Education (A. Luna- 
charasky and Maxim Gorki) ; Social Welfare 
(Alexandra Kollontay) ; Supreme Council of 
National Economy (Vladimir Miliutin) ; also 
Posts and Telegraphs; Ways and Communi- 



- OF SOVIET RUSSIA 1 1 

cations; Finance; and The People's Justice. 

Decrees passed by those commissariats must 
be approved by the Council of People's Com- 
missars and by the All-Russian Central Execu- 
tive Committee, before they are promulgated. 

THE SOVIETS AND THE BOLSHEVIK 
PARTY. 

In the minds of many people there is so 
much confusion that perhaps it is worth while 
to make clear the fact that the Bolshevik or 
Communist Party might be overthrown peace- 
ably . without overthrowing the Soviet system. 
The party of which Nicolai Lenin is the dis- 
tinguished leader is only one party within the 
Soviets, albeit for the present the dominant 
party, just as the Republican Party is now the 
dominant party within the American Congress. 

It is the opinion of many neutral observers 
in Russia that if not for Allied intervention and 
invasion a year and a half ago, the Bolshevists 
would have lost their leadership of the Soviets 
to either the Menshevik or the Social Revolu- 
tionary Party. But attack from without caused 
a suspension of the family quarrel within the 
ranks of the revolutionists, and they united to 
repel the invader. 

THE BOLSHEVIKS MODERATING. 

During the eighteen months' period of grace 
that Allied invasion vouchsafed to them, the 
Bolsheviks have moderated so much, have so 
approximated to the Menshevik position as to 
have taken the wind out of their opponents' 
sails. Responsibility and experience are usu- 
ally sobering, and so it has been in Russia. 



12 THE STRUCTURE 

Lenin and other soviet leaders are not "going 
by the book"; their quality of mind is sur- 
prisingly little doctrinaire, considering their 
past lives as revolutionary agitators. They are 
realists dealing with conditions and facing 
facts, and it is certain that revolutionary Rus- 
sia has not reached a state of finality in her 
governmental form, even granted that the so- 
viet system is there to stay. 

NOT INTRODUCING COMMUNISM. 

Though the government party in Russia is 
the Bolshevik or Communist Party, it is not 
communism that they are now introducing. 
Contrary to general impression, they are not 
paying equal salaries, and they are not social- 
izing all industries. Though their ultimate aim 
is communism they believe, I think, that Russia 
will have to go through the same purgatorial 
stages of economic development that other 
countries have gone through. But they believe 
that under proletarian control of the state they 
can consciously accelerate the rate of evolution 
and hurry through the different stages that 
must be passed through before the country will 
be ripe for communism. 

The political soviet structure that I have 
been describing is considered to be temporary, 
as is the scaffolding around a building. It en- 
ables the permanent enduring structure to be 
built. Having captured the political state the 
workers of Russia are now turning their hands 
to the work of constructing the people's palace 
of the new economic order. Danger threat- 
ened from the syndicalist tendencies of some 
of the industrial unions who wanted to run 
their industries without considering the inter- 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 1 3 

ests of the country as a whole. The co-relation 
and interlocking of the industries was impera- 
tive. Industries using public capital, such as 
the railroads, or exploiting such natural re- 
sources as the underground stores of coal, oil, 
copper, iron, etc., could not be turned over for 
management exclusively to the industrial 
unions concerned, for the public has a para- 
mount interest. 

To co-relate these industries there has grad- 
ually been evolved the Supreme Council of 
Public Economy. I was in Petrograd when 
this body came into existence, in January, 
1918. A few representatives of the industrial 
unions, shop stewards' committees and techni- 
cal experts met in a cold stone building over- 
looking the frozen Neva and faced the super- 
human task of bringing order out of the eco-' 
nomic chaos. There were famine, lack of raw 
materials, sabotage of technical staffs, crippled 
railroads, the counter-revolutionary bands and 
Prussian war-lords threatening invasion, mak- 
ing a situation that might- have daunted the 
stoutest-hearted. But they laid their plans; 
thought of the forests of the north, the fisheries 
of the White Sea, the oil fields of the Caucasus, 
the iron and copper and gold of the Urals, the 
new railroads and canals that needed to be 
built. 

Five months later there . was the first big 
All-Russian Conference of the newly-formed 
regional economic councils from all over cen- 
tral Russia and from some of the far-distant 
parts. The Supreme Council of Public Econ- 
omy had become a great state institution. Si- 
lently the Supreme Council of Public Economy 
was becoming the centre of the new economic 
life of the Republic. It had been created while 



14 THE STRUCTURE 

the more prominent political body, the Soviet, 
was struggling to preserve the existence of the 
republic from enemies within and without. As 
Philips Price well puts it, the Supreme Council 
of Public Economy was the tool designed to 
create the new order in Russia; the Soviet was 
only the temporary weapon to protect the 
hands that worked that tool. 

THE ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION OF 
SOVIET RUSSIA. 

Russian industries today may be divided 
into three groups: ( 1 ) The privately-owned, 
(2) the co-operative, (3) the nationalized. 

THE PRIVATELY-OWNED. 

In point of number of establishments, the 
privately-owned form still the largest group, 
but they are mostly the moderate-sized or 
small concerns. Under certain conditions they 
can get credit from the State Bank. 

The Bolsheviki consider it advantageous to 
have the three systems operating side by side. 
If any one thinks that by his superior energy 
and initiative he can compete with the nation- 
alized or co-operative industries, why not? It 
would be stimulating to the socialized indus- 
tries. Obviously, in order to attract labor he 
would have to pay wages at least as high as 
those the workers could get in the socialized 
factories and would have to treat them as well. 

Many large establishments where the owners 
were amenable to control and got along well 
with their workers, were not nationalized. 
Technically they were, but actually they were 
not. The title to his plant passed from the 
owner to the government, but it was leased 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 1 5 

back to him at a nominal rental, and he was 
left alone to manage his enterprise. 

This group is called "sequestrated and requi- 
sitioned", as apart from the "confiscated and 
nationalized". It is really a development from 
the treatment of essential industries during the 
war. Some of the prominent factories that 
were in this sequestrated but not nationalized 
group are the big cable and copper-wire fac- 
tory of Alexiev Tishnikoff and Company at 
Podolsk in the Moscow Gubernia, the Russian 
Electrical Company in Moscow, the Moscow 
Telephone and Telegraph Manufacturing Com- 
pany, the textile factories of the Sava Morosoff 
Company in Nikolsk, Vladimir Gubernia, the 
Galino textile factory at Tambov, and numer- 
ous others. 

Generally the Government appointed one 
member of the Board of Directors of a con- 
trolled factory and the workers appointed an- 
other, but the bulk of the power remained with 
the owning managers. 

WORKERS CO-OPERATIVELY OWN 
MANY FACTORIES. 

So far as the co-operative industries are 
concerned, many medium sized factories and 
business enterprises are now owned jointly by 
the workers engaged in them, particularly 
where the capital required is not excessively 
large. A great many restaurants were owned 
and managed co-operatively by the waiters' 
and cooks' union, barbers co-operatively own- 
ed barber shops, and tailors* and shoemakers* 
unions m some places ran clothing and shoe 
factories. Some few of the theatres were 
managed directly by the Dramatic Actors' As- 
sociation. 



16 



THE STRUCTURE 



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OF SOVIET RUSSIA 



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18 THE STRUCTURE 

Where the workers jointly provide their own 
capital, the State has only certain regulatory 
powers. This type of industry is receiving 
every possible encouragement, for Soviet Rus- 
sia is avoiding the centralized control and bu- 
reaucracy of government ownership as she 
would the plague. Credits for worker-owned 
factories are readily obtained through the State 
banking system. 

THE NATIONALIZED INDUSTRIES. 

Nearly 3,000 of the largest factories and 
mills in Russia have now been nationalized. 

Some establishments are municipalized rath- 
er than nationalized. For instance, I visited a 
dairy farm about fifteen miles from Samara 
that was^owned and managed by the Samara 
Soviet. It had some eight hundred head of 
dairy cattle, and gave every appearance of 
being reasonably well managed. This was not 
co-operatively-owned by the farm workers. 
They were but employes, having only minority 
representation in the management. Electric 
street railways similarly were owned by the city 
concerned, their employes having a share in 
the management. 

In principle, the industries that are being 
nationalized are those that are monopolistic/ in 
character, such as electric and rail transporta- 
tion, those that are exploiting natural resources 
that belong to the nation, and the fully-devel- 
oped industries that have reached the trust 
stage. 

SUPREME COUNCIL OF PUBLIC 
ECONOMY. 

To manage and co-relate all the nationalized 
industries of Russia there is a Supreme Council 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 19 

of Public Economy, made up of 69 members. 
The chairman, Vladimir Miliutin, has a seat 
in the Council of The People's Commissars, or 
Cabinet. Diagram number one may serve to 
make clear the organization that has been 
evolved, or rather that is still evolving, for it 
is not a pretty little scheme conceived in any 
one man's brain or existing only on paper. 
Like Topsy, it "just growed". (See pages 16 
and 17.) 

At the top are indicated some of the big in- 
dustrial unions that together appoint thirty 
mernbers of the Supreme Economic Council 
(and whom they may change at will). The 
Cabinet sends seven (commissars of finance, 
agriculture, posts and telegraphs, ways and 
communications, etc.). The ten regional eco- 
nomic councils each appoint two members, and 
two come from the All-Russian Co-operatives 
which have now become the big distributing 
media for the nationalized as well as for the 
co-operative establishments. 

The Supreme Council of Public Economy 
thus represents all elements engaged in produc- 
tion. Hours and wages in the nationalized fac- 
tories are determined by this body. y^ 

APPOINTING MANAGERS. 

To manage each industry there is a "Cen- 
tral" or board of directors, composed of nine 
members. Taking, for example, the coal in- 
dustry, to manage all the coal mines in Soviet 
Russia there is a "Coal Central" of nine mem- 
bers appointed as follows: Three by the Na- 
tional Coal Miners' Union (practical workers) , 
three by the Supreme Council of Public Econ- 
omy (the public), and the remaining three are 
technical experts appointed upon recommen- 



20 THE STRUCTURE 

dation of the coal-mine managers. 

To manage each mine or group of mines 
there is a board of three managers. One "comes 
from the workers, elected either directly or 
through their mine committee, and whom they 
may change at any time. The second member 
is appointed from Moscow by the Coal Central, 
a technical mining engineer, and the third 
comes from the regional economic council, a 
body representing all the workers in all the in- 
dustries of that economic region. 

MANAGERS HAVE REAL POWER. 

To these managers and technical experts is 
given real power. They are not at the mercy 
of the chance vote of a lot of more or less 
ignorant workers. They have power to hire 
and to "fire", tempered by the fact that there 
is machinery for appeal and adjustment. 

If a worker be disciplined, discharged or 
suspended, he thinks unjustly, he appeals to 
his shop committee, which then takes up the 
dispute with the board of managers, one of 
whom is their own appointee. Most disputes 
would be peaceably settled at that point. If, 
however, the managers stood by their decision, 
the next step of the shop committee would be 
to appeal to the Regional Economic Council, 
which body, it will be remembered, appointed 
manager number two. It is highly improbable 
that any dispute would get past this point with- 
out being settled. If it did, however, still no 
impasse would be reached, for the third place 
of adjustment would be at the offices of the 
Coal Central, which appointed manager num- 
ber three. The National Coal Miners' Union 
could also go direct to the Coal Central, one- 
third of whose members they appointed. 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 21 

The final court of all is the Supreme Council 
of Public Economy, though it is inconceivable 
that any but a national industry-wide conflict 
would ever get so far without being amicably 
settled. 

If the workers in any industry were to refuse 
to accept the decision of the Supreme Council 
of Public Economy, they would so obviously 
be striking against all the workers of Russia 
that they would find absolutely no support in 
public opinion whatsoever. It is in this way that 
Soviet Russia expects to avoid strikes without 
denying to the workers the right to strike. 

THE WAGE SCALES IN THE NATION- 
ALIZED INDUSTRIES AND SERVICES. 

In many nationalized establishments now the 
day or weekly wage has given way to a modi- 
fied piece-work system or premium wage scale 
that stimulates productivity and rewards effi- 
ciency. 

There is much work, however, that cannot 
be measured in terms of product, as for in- 
stance, executives, technical engineers, clerical 
workers, teachers and other professional peo- 
ple. All such occupations are classified into 
27 groups (with sub groups) ranging from the 
young unskilled laborer or boy just entering 
industry up to the technical experts and execu- 
tives at the top, with salaries ranging between 
1,200 rubles a month minimum up to 4,Q00 
rubles a month maximum. (At present rate of 
exchange, from $60 a month up to $200.) 
That "maximum" is exceeded sometimes by 
any sum necessary to secure some desired tech- 
nical expert, though it is regarded as a defec- 
tion from principle. 

No believing communist, not even Lenine 



22 THE STRUCTURE 

himself, is paid more than 4,000 rubles a 
month. 

Having been engaged in cultural- educational 
work for many years, it has interested me very 
much recently to hear that teachers in Russia 
have been placed in category number one, in 
the class with the technical experts and execu- 
tives, getting the highest rate of pay. 

Wages in the privately-owned and in the co- 
operative industries are determined by mutual 
agreement. 

Artists, writers, poets, actors, lecturers, 
singers and many others are either "free 
lances" receiving in fees whatever their patrons 
pay them, or they may be in the employ of 
various organizations. There is no thought of 
regimenting artists' (or anyone else for that 
matter.) It is considered that artists need only 
an enlightened art-loving public and personal 
freedom. But not merely freedom to starve! 
There must be opportunity, say during their 
period of immaturity or mediocrity, for them 
to earn a modest living by only a few hours 
work a week in more prosaic occupations, their 
art for the time being an avocation. 

Doctors, dentists, and nurses may practice 
privately, as before, or they may be employed 
by the departments of public health which are 
rapidly socializing .medicine. Priests are no 
longer in the pay of a state church, but are 
now paid by their congregations. Lawyers, 
as such, were hard hit. Some former lawyers 
were appointed as judges in the new People's 
Courts of Equity. It is surprising to find how 
many lawyers were revolutionists and them- 
selves regarded their former profession as 
parasitic. Lenin himself was once a lawyer. 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 23 

Professional lawyers have been supplanted by 
a system of courts elected by the Soviets and 
acting according to the principles of what they 
call common-sense justice. 

FINANCIAL RESULTS OF NATIONALI- 
ZATION. 

According to "Ekonomitcheskaya Zhizn," 
"Economic Life," official organ of the 
Supreme Council of Public Economy, the 
financial results of nationalization from 
January 1918 up to the end of June 1919 
was a loss of a little over seven billion rubles. 
This does not include some three and a half 
billion rubles capital expenditure on adapting 
private undertakings for nationalization, re- 
moving machinery and staffs, and other one- 
time expenditure. 

The losses are officially put as due to ( 1 ) 
cost of production exceeding receipts from 
sales; (2) heavy administration expenditure, 
due to bureaucratic overstaff ing ; (3) pay- 
ment of wages to large numbers of hands who 
owing to lack of fuel or raw material were 
temporarily unoccupied. Thus the Petrograd 
PutilofFiron and steel works was paid 66,000,- 
000 rubles for wages in 1918; but it produced 
goods worth only 15,000,000 rubles. The 
textile works are much better off, a large pro- 
portion of hands being kept steadily occupied, 
mostly with flax and linen weaving. By a 
new invention, cotton-sp*inning machinery was 
adapted to the spinning of flax. 

Interesting and authoritative information 
came a month ago in a* letter from Mr. George 
Lomonosoff, Head of the Department of 
State Construction. Mr. Lomonosoff is not a 



24 THE STRUCTURE 

bolshevik but a menshevik. He is a noted 
engineer, known all over Russia, and was sent 
as an envoy to America from the Ministry of 
Communications in the Kerensky Cabinet, re- 
turning to Russia only seven or eight months 
ago. 

In his letter he says that the productivity of 
Russian factories has been increasing, and 
estimates that most factories that are not cut 
off from their raw materials are now produc- 
ing about the same as they did before the war. 
(In the first months of the Bolshevik revo- 
lution productivity fell down in some places 
to as low as twenty per cent) . 

Speaking of his own work, as Head of the 
Department of State Construction, he tells of 
"the biggest electric generating station in the 
world" now under construction near Moscow. 
He expects within a year or two to have most 
of the factories in the Moscow district com- 
pletely electrified. Extensive peat beds are 
being used for the cheap production of elec- 
tricity. He says also that his department is 
now at work building two new cities. A few 
months ago they widened and deepened a 
canal system between the Baltic sea and the 
Volga river, which permitted torpedo boats 
to be transferred from the Baltic through to 
the Caspian sea. Those vessels appearing un- 
expectedly in Denekin's rear played some part 
in his defeat. That engineering project had 
been planned for many years, but not hereto- 
fore executed. He says also that some hun- 
dreds of miles of new railway lines are under 
construction. 

On October 20th last at Briansk was opened 
the first factory in Russia for the production 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 25 

of benzol, under management of the Chemical 
Central of the Supreme Council of Public 
Economy. 

"Ekonomitcheskaya Zhizn" ("Economic 
Life") reporting the condition of the cotton 
mills in the Moscow district in June 1919 says 
that of 550 mills 447 were working, employ- 
ing 413,822 persons, producing yarn and 
textiles not of cotton but of linen. Flax is 
relatively abundant and the mill plants have 
been adapted. 

EXTENT OF NATIONALIZATION. 

According to the latest available infor- 
mation, a report made by Vladimir Miliutin, 
chairman of the Supreme Council of Public 
Economy, in November last, nearly three 
thousand of the largest establishments have 
been nationalized, of which he says nearly 
nine hundred were not working at that time 
because of lack of fuel. . (Railroads were be- 
ing used exclusively for military purposes, 
transporting the Red Army between the thir- 
teen different fronts on which they were fight- 
ing, and they had not then recaptured the big 
coal mines of the Donetz basin.) 

The chief nationalization decree dated 
June 28, 1918) nationalized certain classes 
of undertakings capitalized at not less than 
1,000,000 rubles, and certain classes 
capitalized at not less than 500,000 rubles. 
The undertakings listed in that particular de- 
cree numbered 1 , 1 00. Mines were the only 
industry in which every undertaking, regard- 
less of capitalization, was nationalized. Stock- 
holders were not compensated. Owner- 
managers were given the opportunity of con- 



26 THE STRUCTURE 

tinuing in the management. 

On June 1 , 1918, before the nationalization 
decree first mentioned, about 500 miscel- 
laneous undertakings were nationalized. This 
was done on no system, the aim being to 
rescue the plants from the employees, who 
had themselves seized plant and stock and 
tried to run production on their own account 
without state control or expert guidance. 
The owners, experts and engineers were 
mostly chased away. This anarchical system 
of communization led to loss, stoppage of 
production and wreckage or sale of machinery; 
and it was this which led the Soviet State to 
intervene. A recent tendency is to continue 
leaving the middle-sized and small indus- 
tries free. 

FOREIGN TRADE. 

When the blockade shall have been broken 
and foreign' trade resumed, imports and ex- 
ports will be a government monopoly, 
managed by a department of the Supreme 
Council of Public Economy. In selling goods 
to Soviet Russia expenses of salesmanship, 
advertising and long-time credits will be elimi- 
nated. Russia will get the benefit of large- 
scale buying, getting competitive bids from 
American, English, French and German manu- 
facturers. 

The government has expressed unwilling- 
ness to buy goods made by cheap labor, as it 
might in the Orient. If practicable, Soviet 
Russia plans to require on every piece of 
goods bought by them the Union Label and 
a guarantee that no child labor has entered 
into its manufacture. 

Available to pay for first purchases it has 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 27 

stores of hemp, hides, flax, timber, platinum 
and gold. It has two hundred million dollars 
in gold bullion immediately available. 

Mr. Isaac -Don Levine, interviewing 
Vladimir Miliutin, asked what effect possession 
of the Ural gold mines would have upon the 
financial condition of Soviet Russia. Mr. 
Miliutin replied: 

"Gold is no longer required for internal 
financial purposes. We keep gold reserves 
only for trade with foreign countries. As soon 
as the blockade is raised we intend to pur- 
chase large quantities of manufactured 
products abroad, paying for them with gold 
and raw materials such as lumber, wool, hemp, 
flax and cotton. 

"Internally, money has lost some of its 
former importance, since we have nationalized 
the industries and commerce. Even now, 
when our textile trust buys coal from the fuel 
trust, no actual money is transferred from the 
treasury of the first trust to that of the second, 
but the value in money is entered on the 
books. The banks have become centers of 
social book-keeping. Since both trusts are 
owned by the government the deposits of one 
are equalized by the surpluses of the other in 
the state treasury. Money is thus used only 
as a measure of value. Under complete 
nationalization money would disappear as a 
purchasing power. Gold would then be used 
for dental and similar purposes within soviet 
Russia, and for foreign purchases." 

Testimony as to the later workings of this 
political and economic organization that I saw 
in the making was recently supplied by an un- 
usually competent observer, Professor W. T. 



28 THE STRUCTURE 

Goode, sent to Russia by the Manchester 
Guardian as their special investigator. Writ- 
ing late in October he said: 

"That it is a strong government is beyond 
dispute. The idea that it is composed of men 
who forced themselves into offices for which 
they were entirely unfit seems to me, after 
months of experience among them, quite out- 
side the truth. The eighteen Commissars, or 
Ministers, are men of unusual' intelligence — in 
some cases of high technical qualifications. 
And however they have been chosen, they 
were well chosen. 

"Lenin himself, whatever opinion may be 
held of his ideas, is by way of being a political 
genius. Krassin, Commissar for Trans- 
portation, is a highly qualified technician and 
was formerly manager for all the Russias of 
the Siemens-Schuckert Company. Luna- 
charsky, Commissar of the People's Education, 
is a man in love with his work, and one who 
has that rare quality in an educational re- 
former — vision — and he labors to materialize 
his visions. Miliutin, Commissar of Indus- 
tries, was a professor of economics at Mos-. - 
cow University. Kurski, Commissar of Justice, 
is a lawyer, while in Tomski and Melnichansky, 
of the professional unions; Dr. Semasko, State 
Hygiene; Mrs. Lebedev, doctor of medicine of 
the Maternity branch of the Commissariat of 
Social Welfare, and Siderski of Food Control, 
not to mention others, the government has 
people of solid ability, great experience and 
considerable powers for work. 

"The Council of People's Commissars is a 
strong executive body, and they are men of 
grip. They recoil from no act which they con- 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 29 

sider justifiable in the interests of the govern- 
ment. And here is, I think, one of the secrets 
of their power. Another is their capacity for 
work. The stories of orgies and self-seeking 
are quite false. A London clerk lives better 
than they do. Their lives are simple, their 
habits and dress equally so. 

"I mention this only to show the character 
of the men who are in the forefront of 
bolshevism and to, put down coldly my ex- 
perience with them. But even these men could 
not hold their own without a good organization 
to back them. This they have, and the 
western world should realize that politically 
and administratively the organization is strong 
and capable. 

"The commissiariats, or ministries, are 
well-housed, elaborately organized and highly 
staffed. They are employing large numbers 
of the former bourgeoisie. The head and 
front of the whole organization is supplied by 
pure socialists, of the Bolshevik party, some 
three hundred thousand strong. Its discipline, 
self-imposed, is complete and unique and is 
rigidly observed. When called upon for some 
duty, however distasteful, the professed com- 
munist must obey without hesitation. At 
times even the leaders are ordered off into 
the country to some part where propaganda is 
needed, without explanation or justification, 
and they go. 

"In cases where some lapse occurs, bribery 
or lawbreaking, if the offender be a non- 
communist, he is punished with prison; if com- 
munist, he is shot as a traitor to his prin- 
ciples. It will be seen, then, that the com- 



30 THE STRUCTURE 

munists form the spearhead of bolshevism, 
and are a formidable weapon." 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE IMPROVE- 
MENT. 

For supervision and improvement of the 
whole organization of government there has 
been set up a department of state control (re- 
sponsible to the All-Russian Congresses), 
/which deserves a brief description. 

It is subdivided and covers the whole ad- 
ministration. Its powers extend to all de- 
partments, to the central executive committee, 
even to the Council of People's Commissars. 
It controls the finances and budget. It is 
capable of compelling departments to improve 
their work, and can stop overlapping of de- 
partments and duplication of work. It has 
suppressed departments as unnecessary. If 
any official does work that is unsatisfactory, it 
can recommend his removal, and it can and 
does prosecute incompetent or sinning officials. 

And not only does it control, it also in- 
structs, and sends down officials to teach those 
in provincial towns and local Soviets. 

One of the greatest difficulties experienced 
by the Bolsheviks has been in finding com- 
petent officials, and they themselves trace 
many of their errors to the character of the 
men they employed at first. But they have 
set out to supply themselves with more reliable 
elements. 

In the palatial club of Moscow merchants 
they have established a school of Soviet 
workers with seven hundred students drawn 
from all parts of Russia by the local Soviets, 
whose expenses are paid, and a course of four 



OF SOVIET RUSSIA 31 

months provided in matters relating to local 
government. 

A test has to be passed at the end of the 
course, and when it is remembered that these 
700 can be turned out three times a year, the 
influence of such a move can be understood. 

ECONOMIC ALLIANCES. 

From what I know of Soviet Russia's 
economic philosophy and from talks I had 
with Tchichernin, Commissar for Foreign 
Affairs, Lunacharsky, Alexandra Kollontay 
and Lenin himself, I should say that it is not 
likely that the Soviet Government will enter 
into exclusive agreements to purchase from 
or to sell to particular countries. They stand 
for free trade between nations. 

Russia is against the peace conference idea 
of turning Europe into a patch-work quilt of 
small states, each maintaining customs barriers 
likely to lead to fresh wars. The bolshevists 
believe rather in integration into fewer and 
larger economic units by voluntary federation, 
but they think that will hardly come until the 
workers in other countries gain control. Their 
contention is that the European States 
economically are not independent of each 
other but interdependent. Each has some- 
thing that the others need: One has raw 
materials in abundance, another food, another 
manufactured goods. Political autonomy 
should be retained, but economic federation 
is necessary^ they say. 

The Soviet Foreign Office will doubtless 
welcome the federation of the Baltic States 
as a step in the right direction, notwithstand- 
ing that France considers such federation a 
means of defense against bolshevism. 



32 SOVIET RUSSIA 

One soviet official once asked me in Mos- 
cow: "What kind of a country would your 
America be if its forty-eight states were 
economically autonomous and Massachusetts 
couldn't trade with New York State without 
paying heavy duties? Wouldn't it be an 
anachronism in the twentieth century?" 

The ultimate dream of many in soviet 
Russia is that when the workers rule in Europe 
and battle-flags are furled, then the European 
states, with linked-up railroads and a common 
currency, will evolve for the purposes of their 
economic life into The United States of 
Europe, without monarchies, without armies 
and without customs barriers. 

Chimerical? Yes, but so seemed the idea 
that the councils of workers' and peasants' 
deputies could unify and govern mighty 
Russia. Yet measurably they are doing that, 
in face of the hostility of old and powerful 
foreign governments. Without such hostility 
Russia would have been tranquil as far back 
as March or April of nineteen-eighteen. 
Russian counter-revolution was crushed and 
the period of reconciliation had set in. Then 
came foreign intervention, a revival of bitter- 
ness, terroristic excesses, and the retention in 
power of the very party the Allied govern- 
ments wanted to "down." Now Russia has 
defeated her foreign as well as her domestic 
enemies. Were there peace with the outside 
world it is certain that there would be recon- 
ciliation within Russia, an end of terror, an 
end of sabotage, and the counsels of the more 
moderate would prevail. Experience and re- 
sponsibility would continue their sobering 
work. 



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